This time last weekend I was in Reno NV for Biggest Little FurCon, selling books and art in the vendor’s hall next to my good friend and colleague Mary Capaldi. It had been a rather uncertain road to the con, what with the dealer liaison staff being somewhat uncommunicative and my own natural inertia when it comes to leaving my comfortable house with my comfortable cats and my comfortable dog not to mention my comfortable collection of kettlebells. But leave it I did, and now I am glad. The show was a success on many levels, not least of which in that I have left it motivated and inspired to make more and better art. There is nothing I like better at a con, I’ve finally come to realize, than sitting at a table and showing off my work. The stage-hogging adolescent in me dies hard. There is also a special joy in actually selling stuff that I made, and making people happy doing it.
So I spent the weekend doing that. It was also brightened by the sudden appearance of my partners on Saturday, who had driven over from Sacramento. It’s hard being in a long-distance relationship, and it puts a lot of pressure on the precious time we get to spend together, but they are both so supportive of me and my work it makes me appreciate them all the more.
Lots of commissions at BLFC, which is a nice change from the last few cons I’ve done. Doing commissions at cons is something like live theatre, and I get a similar rush from doing drawings on the spot as I do from being up on stage—with less squinting into bright lights. Even better is the sitting up around a table full of artists with commissions all working together, all encouraging each other, and if necessary lending support and advice and sometime equipment. I am increasingly appreciative of furries and their propensity toward paying artists to draw their fantastic characters. It is always a challenge, but I get to draw things I’d never otherwise imagine, such as this fantastic civet-philippine eagle griffin:
Merch sales were slow, so it was just as well that commissions were up. I also had to good fortune to discover that I love drawing sergals thanks to a nice fellow who asked me to make him a badge of his sergal character, Winter. When I announced that I would be doing a Sergal Sunday Special he brought all his friends to get sergals from me and it turned what would have been a lackluster end to the show into a rollicking bang.
I was also asked to do a quagga for a fellow dealer. I’d never drawn a quagga before but I knew what they were and I was excited to try and I am so charmed by the result I know for certain this won’t be the last quagga I draw. They may be extinct in this universe but they will never be extinct in my heart.
Perhaps the climax of the show came when, on a return trip from the washroom on Sunday afternoon, I overheard a conversation taking place a few feet from my table to the effect that someone had a sketchbook, and was looking for someone who was still open for commissions at the tail end of the con.
Now I love sketchbooks. I love getting to contribute to what is essentially a collaboration between countless artists. Sometimes I find many friends already present. Usually I get four or five sketchbooks at a commission-heavy con. This year at BLFC I had gotten zero.
On a whim, high on drawing sergals, I mentioned to the pair with the sketchbook that, if they were looking to get a last-minute drawing, they should talk to the artist behind that table (pointing at mine, which was currently occupied by my boyfriend) in about (I mimed checking my watch) five seconds. I then darted behind my table and asked how I could help.
In one of those happy sequences of serendipity it came out that the person in question wanted to get a drawing in his husband’s sketchbook—since the husband couldn’t be there that weekend—featuring a scene from the Silmarillion of all things! And his friend had gotten an ink sketch from me last year.
So I did his husband’s character, a bull, as Fingolfin before the brazen doors of Angband calling Morgoth to duel. All in the last two hours of the den’s opening hours.
He picked it up ten minutes before we closed, and it positively made my weekend.
So many other good things happened. The all-you-can-eat sushi bar on Thursday night (turns out I can eat quite a lot); meeting a very special fan from my Let’s Playing days; staying up late drawing with Kikidoodle and Golden Druid and Ink Maven and Etuix; not to mention some of the nicest con-goers I’ve ever had the pleasure of dealing to. I mean that honestly: no one griped at my prices, no one camped in front of my table, lots of people said kind things, and several tipped! It left me greatly encouraged and motivated to keep applying to these cons—even though the rejections are so hard to take. I saw a lot of flyers for Anthro Northwest, which made me a little sad since I didn’t get into that one and thus won’t be able to go. Lots of people asked if I would be back at BLFC next year, and with the juried system of the vendor’s hall I could not promise anything except that I would try.
One thing, however, is for certain: I will be at AnthroCon in July, and for that show I will have an entire table to spread my wares. I also have a lot of work to do beforehand, so it is a good thing BLFC has left me so motivated.
It has been a good week since. Mary and her husband Ryan (also an artist) rode back with me through the majestic landscape and through the nodding daisies of Modoc all the way to Bend, where we have all been enjoying the brisk spring weather. I have always felt fortunate to be able to live where I do, and it gives me great joy to have such good friends to share my home with. Yesterday we hiked up to see my (sleeping) volcanos, and did some sketching there. Truly a wonderful experience.
Now it is Saturday. I take them to the airport in a few hours, and then I go to the pool for my first shift as a Lead Lifeguard. I have the manuscript for my next eBook almost ready, and funds to order equipment and stock for AnthroCon. Summer is coming, and everything is happening.